Linguistics

[claudicici]

...if he's talking about the profile published by the R's,it's a young man in his 20's,a pedophile who is

"capable of acting without compassion."

It also says the killer may have expressed opinions about organized religion, capitalism and U.S. participation in global affairs, or had a fantasy about the risks of what it would be like to abduct someone.



Read more: http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_14060024#ixzz0za5AETdg
Coloradodaily.com

 

[claudicici]

Hmm, is this sourced? My understanding is that she was a passenger in a vehicle driven by her fiance. Perhaps she grabbed the wheel, jumped out the door, caused him to swerve? Or maybe this is scuttlebutt too??

How's about the lawyer was just hired to stop the BPD from harrassing her? Sounds like a good idea to me!

I've been searching but I can't find any source.Back then I remember hearing or reading that Beth tried to commit suicide and was in therapy before the accident happened.
The only article I found regarding LE investigating Beth's death is this one

http://web.dailycamera.com/extra/ramsey/1997/02/20-2.html

...and her friends suggest in this article that JR seemed to be a great dad and had a good relationship with her.
Does anyone remember where those rumors came from that Beth had a failed suicide attempt?

 

[claudicici]

Is that all you have to say? Is that your :twocents:?

Originally Posted by Holdontoyourhat
How does a fat cat get fat anyway? From eating too many mice. And where are there lots of mice? Where theres a lot of cheese. And where is there lots of cheese?

Luxembourg.

.....ahem ,let me remind you that those were your 2 cents HOTYH......

 

[madeleine]

I've been searching but I can't find any source.Back then I remember hearing or reading that Beth tried to commit suicide and was in therapy before the accident happened.
The only article I found regarding LE investigating Beth's death is this one

http://web.dailycamera.com/extra/ramsey/1997/02/20-2.html

...and her friends suggest in this article that JR seemed to be a great dad and had a good relationship with her.
Does anyone remember where those rumors came from that Beth had a failed suicide attempt?

ST's book ?Not sure.

 

[tapu]

I have two initial comments to make about this matter that Hat has brought up. First, though, Hat, I had noted the difference in numbers for the word repetition between your two examples--I just didn't know if that was what you were referring to. In most anything evidential, there is not only one point to be made.

Okay, comments:

1. The words in your canon, left over after subtracting the specifics you identify, are fairly to highly common words. You will find them with regularity across writers, subject areas, genres. I imagine there are very few books without "situation" appearing at least once.

2. Would the representation of number of word occurrences in whole numbers really be indicative of a significant difference? Try percentages. (Or I will later.) Also, you would need to compare the frequency of occurrence in many texts, not just one, to see if it is significant. And, as M noted above, frequency would be increased in certain subject areas.

So, more thought later. Thanks for telling us what you were talking about! It's very interesting to think about.

 

[Holdontoyourhat]

Hmmm, nope, nothing's coming to me. What is the 'published profile'?

Iinterest in techno-crime movies was published as part of a profile. Remember? Movies?

Here's more published profile

http://www.corpus-delicti.com/douglas_jbr.html

Ramseys ran their fourth local newspaper ad appealing for help from the public. The ad noted that the killer "appears to be obsessed with techno-crime movies and phrases from them"

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986892,00.html#ixzz0zbmt8FfB​

 

[Holdontoyourhat]

...if he's talking about the profile published by the R's,it's a young man in his 20's,a pedophile who is

"capable of acting without compassion."

It also says the killer may have expressed opinions about organized religion, capitalism and U.S. participation in global affairs, or had a fantasy about the risks of what it would be like to abduct someone.



Read more: http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_14060024#ixzz0za5AETdg
Coloradodaily.com

Yes thats very close. I've never read this article before. There were other profile remarks like women problems, alcohol, money problems (Ramsey family statement), used to exerting authority over others (Clint VanZandt in Newsweek)...

This does makes it seem like a thrill crime very similar to L & L. They were claimed to have been inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche philosophy where people who believe they are superior also believe they are not morally bound.

 

[Holdontoyourhat]

I have two initial comments to make about this matter that Hat has brought up. First, though, Hat, I had noted the difference in numbers for the word repetition between your two examples--I just didn't know if that was what you were referring to. In most anything evidential, there is not only one point to be made.

Okay, comments:

1. The words in your canon, left over after subtracting the specifics you identify, are fairly to highly common words. You will find them with regularity across writers, subject areas, genres. I imagine there are very few books without "situation" appearing at least once.

2. Would the representation of number of word occurrences in whole numbers really be indicative of a significant difference? Try percentages. (Or I will later.) Also, you would need to compare the frequency of occurrence in many texts, not just one, to see if it is significant. And, as M noted above, frequency would be increased in certain subject areas.

So, more thought later. Thanks for telling us what you were talking about! It's very interesting to think about.

I found another text called The Kidnap Murder Case (1938):

situation 38, stray 2, gentlemen 19, rested 3, remaining 4, serves 1, possession 3, scrutiny 1, adequate 2, constant 3, devices 1, must 45, arrange 1, advise 3, immediate 8, denied 1, result 8, particularly 11, respect 3, proper 2

It uses 20 of the 31 ransom note words, but only 159 ransom note words in 67613 words. The cinematography book uses them 3 times more frequently.

Maybe reducing the list to 10 least common words? Like I said I'm willing to check any link you can provide to established text but from before 1996. I believe this text (1151 of 120772) is going to be hard to beat. The use of the more common words should really be helping the unrelated texts to match this text in usage of ransom note vocabulary.

 

[madeleine]

Excellent post, DeeDee. I believe the fact that the Ramsey's claim there was no Christmas morning video that year is huge. I always have. I've also been ridiculed for this opinion. Doesn't matter to me. I'm from the South and I can't speak for the rest of the country, but Tradition is a huge part of Christmas here. If there wasn't a video made that year, it was the first in the Ramsey family history and I just don't believe that. If the batteries had actually been dead, Patsy would have made those children wait till they were charged. Even IDI's should understand this, but they would rather act like it is no big deal and therefore, it has no evidentiary value. There was a video and it contained something the family didn't want LE to see.

What about the 23th party?Same?No video?

 

[tapu]

Something I just worked on, using the:

Word Bank of 1200 High-Frequency Writing Words

The words in this word bank are listed in the order of their frequency of use in everyday writing. Since the is the most frequently used word in our language, its number is one in the word bank. The first 25 words are used in 33% of everyday writing, the first 100 words appear in 50% of adult and student writing, and the first 1,000 words are used in 89% of everyday writing.
Word List from Sitton Spelling Sourcebook Series by Egger Publishing, Inc
http://school.elps.k12.mi.us/donley...vities/4thgrade_spelling/sitton_word_list.htm

Of the 31 words under discussion above, 12 are on this list. So those 12 are in nearly 89% of all writing. That renders them useless for this comparison. I don't have a larger list, but my studied opinion of all this is that all 31 words are well within a range of frequency that would disqualify them from any use of characteristic comparison.

But let's say 6 of the words were very, very unusual to find in even a large pool of writing (on the order of peripatetic, avulsion, palpate), would we find it convincing that two authors who use all 6 words should be the same writer? I don't think so.

It's a very interesting path to take, Hat, but Linguistics is often a lot of math, based on a lot of research like high-frequency word patterning. It is very, very far from the food chain. I hope you are enjoying it, though. It's always nice to find someone else who can stand it!

 

[tapu]

All right, here we go with percentages rather than whole numbers:

x = .01 (where x is the text id'd as written by potential suspect)
y = .001 (where y is text first compared above with x)
z = .002 (where z is text in second comparison above with x)

These are interesting. I couldn't tell one way or the other if that's a significant difference in frequency, but there is the potential. I went to this site to see if I could compute a p-value, but I couldn't remember how! (That's depressing because I taught statistics for linguistics in grad school. Great.... )

Are there statisticians among us? How do we tell if that difference is significant? (Acknowledging that we'd need a whole lot of texts to test against to find out for real--like 100s,... 1000's... best if controlled for subject matter, historical period with a decade, yada, yada.)

 

[joeskidbeck]

What about the 23th party?Same?No video?

I don't feel as strongly about a video from the party. There were so many people there, that if one was made, someone would have spoken of it. I feel so strongly about the Christmas morning video because it was a family tradition and that is not taken lightly in most families. I know that my daughter would delay all activity until those batteries were charged. Patsy Ramsey was very keen on "capturing" the moments as evidenced by all the photos we have seen of the family over these last 14 years and she was especially excited about giving JonBenet the My Twinn doll. She would have wanted to be able to remember her reaction. Too bad it wasn't the one she expected. I'm sincere about that. I feel bad for Patsy that JonBenet didn't love the doll. I would have been very hurt had it been me.

 

[joeskidbeck]

We should probably move our discussion about the video to another thread. We are hijacking (unintentionally) this one.

 

[MurriFlower]

All right, here we go with percentages rather than whole numbers:

x = .01 (where x is the text id'd as written by potential suspect)
y = .001 (where y is text first compared above with x)
z = .002 (where z is text in second comparison above with x)

These are interesting. I couldn't tell one way or the other if that's a significant difference in frequency, but there is the potential. I went to this site to see if I could compute a p-value, but I couldn't remember how! (That's depressing because I taught statistics for linguistics in grad school. Great.... )

Are there statisticians among us? How do we tell if that difference is significant? (Acknowledging that we'd need a whole lot of texts to test against to find out for real--like 100s,... 1000's... best if controlled for subject matter, historical period with a decade, yada, yada.)

So, as an example, if we all presented a literary work written before the RN of a reasonable length, (a novel, play, etc) for each of our suspects, would you be confident that you could identify which of these was the most likely RN writer?

 

[DeeDee249]

What about the 23th party?Same?No video?

There are photos. As a matter of fact, there is a photo we all have seen, showing a pretty JB, her hair styled in the same type of topknot she was found dead in, in a dark (purple?) velvet dress with white lace trim. She is sitting at a table, smiling an angelic smile.
I don't know whether the police confiscated the photos of THAT party, but as was mentioned, there were a lot more people there, including LHP who I am sure would have mentioned JAR being there, especially after the Rs tried to pin the crime on her.

 

[Holdontoyourhat]

Something I just worked on, using the:

Word Bank of 1200 High-Frequency Writing Words

The words in this word bank are listed in the order of their frequency of use in everyday writing. Since the is the most frequently used word in our language, its number is one in the word bank. The first 25 words are used in 33% of everyday writing, the first 100 words appear in 50% of adult and student writing, and the first 1,000 words are used in 89% of everyday writing.
Word List from Sitton Spelling Sourcebook Series by Egger Publishing, Inc
http://school.elps.k12.mi.us/donley...vities/4thgrade_spelling/sitton_word_list.htm

Of the 31 words under discussion above, 12 are on this list. So those 12 are in nearly 89% of all writing. That renders them useless for this comparison. I don't have a larger list, but my studied opinion of all this is that all 31 words are well within a range of frequency that would disqualify them from any use of characteristic comparison.

But let's say 6 of the words were very, very unusual to find in even a large pool of writing (on the order of peripatetic, avulsion, palpate), would we find it convincing that two authors who use all 6 words should be the same writer? I don't think so.

It's a very interesting path to take, Hat, but Linguistics is often a lot of math, based on a lot of research like high-frequency word patterning. It is very, very far from the food chain. I hope you are enjoying it, though. It's always nice to find someone else who can stand it!

Thats about four claims I could ask you to support with some kind of material but I wont. Instead I'll easily disagree with your finding because were not doing an absolute study. Its relative to other authors. Like a yardstick, we can compare which author uses key ransom note words the most. Words like victory, proper, deviation, must, and result.

Incidentally, I can go days without using these 31 words in ordinary conversation, and if I had to write a ransom note 20 years ago I probably wouldn't use any of them.

The only way an author can use a ransom note word is if it is already in his vocabulary and is willing to use it during composition.

Besides, the only claim I made is that the author (who is matching published profile) used more ransom note vocabulary than the other authors, by a factor of 3 to 6 times. It would be GREAT to have a pre-1996 text file link that approximates the ransom note word usage, believe me.

Probably the best, most valid statement you could make is that this author can't be ruled out as the author of the ransom note.

 

[tapu]

So, as an example, if we all presented a literary work written before the RN of a reasonable length, (a novel, play, etc) for each of our suspects, would you be confident that you could identify which of these was the most likely RN writer?

Absolutely not. Not by this method, certainly, but I can't think of any other that might work, either. The note itself is just too small a sample to provide a baseline. It's a dead end. I think everything that has been done with the RN in this respect has exhausted its usefulness. One can offer theories (and obviously many have), based on more or less convincing data, but none of it is conclusive.

 

[tapu]

Well, Hat, that's the best I can do. You are obviously on a path here, and my knowledge of linguistics isn't of aid to you. I wish I knew more to bring to it. I hope you are able to post further findings. It is all very interesting.

 

[Holdontoyourhat]

Absolutely not. Not by this method, certainly, but I can't think of any other that might work, either. The note itself is just too small a sample to provide a baseline. It's a dead end. I think everything that has been done with the RN in this respect has exhausted its usefulness. One can offer theories (and obviously many have), based on more or less convincing data, but none of it is conclusive.

I recommend that you look into McM's findings and tell us what you think. He's a professor of linguistics and noted that the ransom note was so long that for someone to copy it in linguistics and style, they would have to be the same person who authored it. This goes against the idea that the ransom note has been squeezed so dry that there's nothing more left.

Nice try, though.

They sure tried to get PR to copy it, and if I were the parent I would've never agreed to copy the ransom note word for word.

 

[tapu]

Do you have a lot of friends, Hat?